


Honey, You Are the Rock upon Which I Stand

by rafaelbaseball



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Childhood Memories, Christmas Fluff, Family, Learning new things about each other, M/M, Rafael can sing, Religious Discussion, Sonny needs to know more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rafaelbaseball/pseuds/rafaelbaseball
Summary: “Wait, what? You sing?”Rafael holds up a finger, shaking his head. “No, no,” he corrects, “I like to sing. There’s a difference.” He pauses, waving his hand dismissively. “They may have asked me to sing at Christmas mass this year.”“Holy shit.”“I hope that’s not how you start your confessions.”





	Honey, You Are the Rock upon Which I Stand

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompt on Tumblr:
> 
> “I’d love something where they go to mass or talk faith/religion. (a hc of mine is that faith is really important to barba too he's just not as open about it as sonny).”
> 
> I gave this a shot and enjoyed writing it in spite of the fact that I’m not particularity well-versed on the subject of Catholicism. I hope there’s no cause for offense in this fic or anything too outrageously unrealistic! Thank you for reading <3

Could Christmas Eve possibly be better spent than naked in bed with his boyfriend in his arms and a bottle of wine at their bedside?

Sonny is quite certain the answer to that is a resounding no. 

“Have I told you yet that being with you is the best gift I could possibly hope for?” Sonny kisses Rafael’s cheek, grinning against stubbled skin when he hears the snort he’d expected. 

“That might actually be the fourth or fifth time you’ve said it in the past hour, yeah,” Rafael says, “and it hasn’t gotten any less cheesy.”

“I don’t hear you complaining.”

“No, you don’t.” Rafael doesn’t elaborate but the way he bares his neck is good enough for Sonny, who slowly traces a line with his tongue up the side of Rafael’s throat then grazes his teeth over Rafael’s earlobe. 

“You’re beautiful,” Sonny murmurs, wrapping his arms tighter around Rafael’s waist. There’s no space left between them, Rafael’s back is already flush against his chest, but Sonny tries to pull him closer anyway. 

“You’ve said that a few times already, too.” Rafael’s breath hitches when he says the words, he doesn’t fight in when Sonny tugs lightly on his hair to tilt his head back so they can share a deep kiss.

“You’re sure we can’t just do this all day tomorrow, too?” Sonny asks once they’ve parted. 

Rafael has to take a few second to recover, to flick his tongue over his lips as he very strongly considers canceling on his mother for their Christmas Day plans but then sense stumbles its way back into him. “My mom might actually murder you if she knew you were keeping me from seeing her on Christmas with your sexual wiles.”

“Who said anything about sex?” Sonny blinks innocently but Rafael doesn’t look impressed. “Okay, I guess there are worse things than spending our first Christmas apart. We’re going to have to fix that next year, though.”

“Next year, huh? I like the way you think.”

“Thought you would. What are you two doing, anyway?”

“Same thing we do every year, Christmas mass at St. Jerome’s.”

Sonny blinks, replaying Rafael’s words in his head because he’s not altogether sure he’d heard them correctly. “Sorry, you said mass? Christmas mass? At a church?”

“What, do you think I’ll burst into flames if I step foot on holy ground?”

“Of course not, I just… didn’t know you went to church.”

“I don’t,” Rafael says casually. “Just Christmas mass.”

“Oh.”

“You disapprove.”

“No!” Sonny sputters, trying and failing to find the right words. “I mean, are you even religious? We haven’t really talked about it, which is weird if you think about it because you know I am so I feel like it would’ve come up at some point if—”

“Sonny. Relax.”

Sonny realizes then that he’s sitting straight up against the headboard, shoulders stiff and muscles right, and he forces himself to take a breath to release some of his tension. He doesn’t know why he’s getting worked up; but that isn’t exactly true, is it? Rafael has offered up opinions on the Catholic Church before but he’d never once mentioned actually attending it. Sonny can’t help but wonder why Rafael had kept this from him, he doesn’t think that’s unfair. 

“So you go every year.”

“Yes. Family tradition.”

“But you don’t believe in God.”

“What gave you that idea?”

Sonny groans. “You’re messing with me.”

“A little,” Rafael admits with a wicked smirk. “It’s like I said, I go once a year on Christmas because it’s what we’ve done since before I can remember. I spent a lot of time at St. Jerome’s when I was a kid, I learned how to play the piano there. I learned that I liked to sing there.”

“Wait, what? You sing?”

Rafael holds up a finger, shaking his head. “No, no,” he corrects, “I like to sing. There’s a difference.” He pauses, waving his hand dismissively. “They may have asked me to sing at Christmas mass this year.”

“Holy shit.”

“I hope that’s not how you start your confessions.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me you sing?”

Shrugging uncomfortably, Rafael shifts in Sonny’s asks so he can lift his head to meet his boyfriend’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he says, “it’s personal.”

Sonny reaches down to lift up the sheet draped over Rafael’s naked torso, glancing pointedly downward then back at his boyfriend. “We’re a little beyond personal, aren’t we?”

Batting Sonny’s hand away, Rafael laughs, letting his head fall back against Sonny’s shoulder. “Okay, point taken. I just don’t like the idea of it being common knowledge. I can’t even really say why, it’s just… I don’t know. I don’t talk about it a lot, that’s all.”

It’s not as if Sonny doesn’t understand what that’s like. As open as he tends to be, even if sometimes he doesn’t necessarily intend to be so candid in the first place, he still has things he prefers to keep private. This relationship, it’s still growing, it’s still relatively new. They’re still learning about each other. Sonny is okay with it taking time. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says sincerely, threading his fingers through Rafael’s. “Not now, not ever, I get it.”

Rafael hums, bringing Sonny’s hand up to his lips to press a kiss against his knuckles. “It’s okay, I want to tell you. When I was younger, my grandmother would sing me these lullabies. Some of them were Spanish lullabies. Some of them deeply, deeply disturbing Spanish lullabies. I’d end up singing along with her and she loved it, she would always say how much she loved to hear me sing. She’s the one who turned me on to really loving music, she’d teach me Cuban folk songs, we’d sit together for hours listening to Benny Moré, Mongo Santamaría, La Lupe, Arsenio Rodríguez.” He pauses, letting out a soft laugh at a memory Sonny wishes he could see. “She loved Gloria Estefan. _Abuela_ told me I had a gift, that I shouldn’t let it go, but…”

Sonny tilts his head, curious, already deeply invested in the story Rafael is telling him. They’ve shared stories about their pasts with each other, Sonny knows a good amount—not everything, he’s sure, but a good amount—about what Rafael’s father had done to him, he’s asked questions about scars and been met with actual answers, but Rafael doesn’t talk about his grandmother too often. It’s been a few years since she’s passed but but Rafael, the wound is still fresh. “But?” Sonny prompts. 

“My dad was my dad,” Rafael says, sighing. “So we figured the only way to get around that would be to sing for the kids’ church choir. It worked, my mom convinced him it would be a good way to teach me discipline and he was always looking for ways to do that so he didn’t ask too many questions. Sometimes my mom came to watch but _abuela_ was there for every rehearsal. She’d help me practice at home. It’s how we became so close, through the music.”

Sonny hears Rafael’s voice wavering and almost stops him, almost tells him it’s okay to leave it at that if it’s too difficult to talk about his grandmother. 

But then he sees the small, fond smile on Rafael’s face and decides it’s better not to say anything at all. 

“I stopped going to church when I was fifteen.”

“Why?” Sonny asks. With his free hand splayed over Rafael’s soft belly, he has a feeling he already knows the answer. It’s the same answer to why he’d almost become a priest. 

“That’s when I kissed a boy for the first time. His name was Nico Ruiz. People found out. Not about our kiss, it didn’t lead to anything, but his parents caught him with another boy. That week, the sermon was about homosexuality.” Rafael’s laugh is bitter. “Mid 80s, AIDS epidemic, you can imagine how well-received that kind of _sexual deviancy_ was.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.” And he can. Except instead of running away from the church, Sonny had thrown himself into it, out of fear of rejection, out of fear of his own feelings. It’d taken him a long time to get to where he is now, to accept himself and the fact that he’ll never be able to make absolutely everyone in his life share that acceptance; but he’d still kept his faith and he’s thankful for that, for the relationship he’s kept up with God, every single day. 

It makes his heart ache to think Rafael had lost that, even for a second. 

“Anyway.” Rafael’s voice has lowered, his hands fidgets over his belly. He regrets bringing this up, Sonny can tell, so he brushes his lips against Rafael’s shoulder. It seems to work well enough. “You said you thought I didn’t believe in God. I do. Sometimes I do, sometimes I think there’s no way there could be one, not in this world. I definitely don’t believe in the Church.” He hesitates. “Is that ever a problem for you?”

“No,” Sonny says immediately. It sounds forced, he realizes that, so he tries again. “No. Do I wish you’d go with me, okay, yeah. But I get it and it doesn’t change the way I feel about you.”

“So you don’t go to confession and go through a laundry list of things about being with me?” Rafael’s teasing but Sonny frowns, shaking his head.

“Being with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I do thank God for you, Rafael, you should know that. Everyone who knows me well probably knows that.”

For a moment, Rafael goes quiet, though his chest rises and falls more rapidly before he clears his throat. “I’ve thanked God for you, too,” he admits. “I don’t know how much that really means to you when I--”

“Everything,” Sonny says. “It means everything and so do you.” Rafael won’t look at him, in spite of his sweet words. He needs out of this conversation for now, he needs to tap out, and that’s okay. Sonny doesn’t mind. “So hey, tell me what you’re singing tomorrow.”

The corners of Rafael’s mouth twitch upward. “ _O Holy Night_. It was _abuela_ ’s favorite.”

“‘Maybe I can sneak out of my Christmas mass and come to yours, watch you sing.”

Rafael is quick to whip his head around to fix Sonny with a glare. “Don’t you dare,” he says, “I will never forgive you.”

Laughing, Sonny holds up a hand in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, last thing I want is to die by death stare on Christmas. You’ll sing for me sometime, though, won’t you?”

“Maybe,” Rafael says, lifting his chin. “Probably. Something we decide is ours.”

“You saying you want to sing me a song and it’ll be our song? Who’s getting cheesy now?”

“Sonny, I swear to—”

“I like it,” Sonny interrupts. He cups Rafael’s cheeks, kissing him. It’s always the best way to render Rafael speechless. “Let’s never stop being cheesy.”


End file.
